The self-sabotaging body

[Peanut]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/healt ... .html?_r=0

Did anyone read this article from Monday? It was about how contestants from The Biggest Loser showed slower metabolisms and depressed leptin level six years after they went on the crash weight loss program. It was a fascinating and sad look at how difficult it is to keep weight off once one becomes overweight. The regimen of extreme exercise and calorie counting practiced on the show was also criticized by many commenters as totally out of date. I hope that horrible show gets canceled after this study.

[theanimal]

See conversation in this thread:viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3710&start=325#p116483

[BRUTE]

brute thinks this is better discussed in a separate thread, no? humans over there are already talking about something else.

to continue the conversation here, this is what was said so far in the other thread:

Dude is exercising 7 hours a day on a diet of egg whites, toast bread, chicken breast, broccoli, and asparagus that I guesstimate to be between 1000 and 1500 kcal per day. He's working harder than a 24 year old NFL player while eating less than a concentration camp victim. No wonder that his metabolism reacts the way it does. The body wants to live!!

I feel sad for those participants whose metabolism was screwed over for the sake of good TV but I doubt they are very representative of general weight-loss strategies/healthful living strategies (e.g. compare to weight watchers, ... ).

It seems reasonable that it should take about as much work/time to take the weight off as it took to put it on. That is, if one overeats by 200kcal/day (gaining 20 pounds of weight per year) and under-moves by 100kcal/day (a 20 minute walk) (gaining 10 pounds of weight per year), then much like financial debt, that needs to be paid back using proportionate response such as under-eating 100kcal/day and over-moving by 200kcal/day. This would then take off 30 pounds over a year. This also means that it would take a decade to lose 300 pounds. That certainly wouldn't make for good TV but it seems like a reasonable time frame.

having read about this kind of stuff a bit, brute thinks that the body's leptin signals are screwed up - the body thinks it's in constant starvation mode (because it is).

there are now several diets that target leptin levels/sensitivity specifically, as it seems to give human metabolism a "set point", i.e. an anchor body fat point the body wants to regress to. these points can be moved.

one strategy is that of "refeeds", eating a lot of food (or non-allowed foods) once in a while to signal the body it is not actually starving. brute has seen this with just calories (pig out once a week/month), or allowing back for example carbs (on cyclical ketogenic diets) once a week/month.

brute wonders if the BL humans have permanently wrecked their hunger/metabolism signaling/leptin sensitivity, or if they are just still stuck in starvation mode and could "get out of it" if they used stategic refeeds.

[Peanut]

The nyt did some follow-up questions today...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/05/healt ... .html?_r=0

Some key points:

--Studies following those who lost weight quickly vs slowly showed both groups gained back the weight at the same high rates
--Building muscle does little to accelerate resting metabolism

On exercise: "They found that after you lose 10 percent or more of your weight by diet alone, your muscles start using genes that make them more efficient. They burn 20 to 30 percent fewer calories for the same exercise."

And the upshot, which was reflected in many of the comments to the original article:
"Anecdotal reports by people who have succeeded in keeping weight off tend to have a common theme: constant vigilance, keeping close track of weight, controlling what food is eaten and how much (often by weighing and measuring food), exercising often, putting up with hunger and resisting cravings to the best of their ability. Those who maintain a modest weight loss often report less of a struggle than those trying to keep off large amounts of weight."

It sounds exhausting. It seems people need really individualized programs, as well, to be successful.

[Dragline]

If I were that supersized (double recommended weight) and had been that way for a long time, I think I would opt for the bariatric surgery, figuring that the risks associated with it were outweighed by the medical issues and early death that are likely carrying so much weight around.

[BRUTE]

is this the stomach band procedure? brute hasn't heard much good about it, as in, it doesn't seem to actually work. not that brute has seen data, just anecdotes.

[jennypenny]

What I don't understand at all is how this jives with all of the benefits of fasting that we've discussed. Either periods of extreme calorie restriction are good for you or bad for you. How can it be both? What am I missing??

[steveo73]

What I don't understand at all is how this jives with all of the benefits of fasting that we've discussed. Either periods of extreme calorie restriction are good for you or bad for you. How can it be both? What am I missing??

Maybe fasting is bad.

[BRUTE]

"extreme caloric restriction" does not necessarily put the human body into "fasting" mode. brute's current level of knowledge is that fasting basically means ketosis.

if a human does not eat for more than 24 hours, their body will enter ketosis and start metabolizing fatty acids from body fat stores. this is how humans can survive for days and weeks without any food, yet will not die.

but the body doesn't enter ketosis because of caloric restriction, but because of carbohydrate restriction. this might be an evolutionary quirk, where "no carbs" was a good enough approximation for "starvation". eating a ketogenic diet or fasting on purpose might be a hack to trigger this same mode in the body.

in other words, "starvation mode" can actually not be reached by starving a human, because they will enter ketosis. yet giving a human a low calorie, non-ketogenic diet, will cause this human to enter "starvation mode".

[Toska2]

Fasting is bad for fat cells. Larger people fasting could be more negatively affected than average to thin people. Fat cells are known to secrete hormones and proteins. It's also known to store fat soluble posions.

Relevant, look at cell turnover : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipocyte

#5: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/10-dirty ... 56296.html

Macrophages and fat cells produce powerful substances called tumor necrosis factor-alpha and interleukin-6, which help regulate the immune system. But a surplus of fat cells and macrophages probably triggers unnecessary inflammation :
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/your-fat ... 32201.html

[stoneage]

I've been plagued with low metabolism + overeating for years.

I can vastly support the theory, but I'd add it's pretty much the pace of weightloss that's important

Talking from experience, weight watchers have a set of rules which aims at preventing rebound or starvation :
- You must try to eat every WW points in a day,
- You can eat fruits and vegetables in huge quantities,

this alone prevents starve & binge behaviors and avoid losing to much weight to fast.
This allowed me to find another point of equilibrium in eating / metabolism with a lower weight.

unfortunately, life changes made me sleep less, deal with more stress, and food binge. This is the moment I f*ed up my metabolism for real.
Fasting actually helped to stabilize the situation for me. Cravings actually dimished after a few weekly short fasts.

[BRUTE]

yes, sleep is very important. not enough good sleep fucks up the entire body.

[Dragline]

What I don't understand at all is how this jives with all of the benefits of fasting that we've discussed. Either periods of extreme calorie restriction are good for you or bad for you. How can it be both? What am I missing??

They really do different things. Fasting is not really a good weight-loss mechanism unless its of the less-than-24 hours or "no snacking" variety and the diet itself is not very processed. It's more effective as a natural anti-inflammatory and for the effects of autophagy.

For weight loss, you'd be better off just policing what you are eating and how much. But whatever you are doing has to be sustainable. This was the real problem with the biggest loser approach -- it required huge amounts of coaching and outside enforcement and did not create sustainable habits.

[tonyedgecombe]

is this the stomach band procedure? brute hasn't heard much good about it, as in, it doesn't seem to actually work. not that brute has seen data, just anecdotes.

We don't seem to know yet although there are some clear benefits for people with type 2 diabetes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bariatric ... _morbidity

[7Wannabe5]

I don't think there is any one answer to whether fasting is beneficial, because people are not metabolically the same to begin with. I'll offer another example. I'm primarily an endomorph. There was a phase of my life where I associated with quite a few other women who were breast-feeding infants. Almost every woman who was an endomorph to begin with had trouble with putting on weight while breast-feeding, while the women who were natural ectomorphs had trouble with losing weight while breast-feeding. My ex-sister-in-law who is usually hanging out at around 5'9" maybe 120 lbs. , took off her shirt and showed me that after weaning her second baby she no longer had any breast tissue. She was flat as a 12 year old boy. OTOH, I was hungry all the time when I was nursing. I rationally knew that I only needed X more calories/day to provide nutrition to infant, but my body was screaming "Eat, eat, eat...!"

Also, I would note that one desperate measure short of bariatric surgery that has been proven to "work" is any sort of amphetamine and/or natural anti-inflammatory. All the reasonably slender/curvy female endomorphs I hung out with in high school and college frequently put themselves on variations of the coffee, chocolate and aspirin diet. Relatively pain-free, then load the Stones into your walkman and wrap yourself in a sweat-suit made out of Hefty bags and ride your exercise bike for an hour. Then you can go to the thrift store and buy a cute little dress and go out dancing on Friday night, and "afford" to eat some of the chili cheese fries off of your boyfriend's plate and/or go out for sushi or vegetarian with your girlfriends the next day. Of course, you can only do chocolate/coffee/aspirin periodically or you will adjust, and that is how fasting works too. It briefly has a bit of a speedy effect on the metabolism of an endomorph, but then the body will adjust. You need to let yourself have some chili cheese fries and eel roll in between bouts. Also be very careful to ignore advice offered by well-meaning, but ill-informed natural ecto-mesomorphs (especially men.) You know best what works for you.

[jennypenny]

So is intermittent fasting more like high-intensity interval training, with short bouts of extreme exercise/calorie restriction leading to hormesis instead of degradation?

[BRUTE]

yes. or maybe "giving the metabolic system a rest" is more apt, brute isn't sure if hormesis covers that.

[Lemon]

is this the stomach band procedure? brute hasn't heard much good about it, as in, it doesn't seem to actually work. not that brute has seen data, just anecdotes.

There are multiple options. Band being least invasive. Rou XenY most. More invasive, more weight loss, faster, more side effects. They work, but they pretty much force you into it by physically limiting what you can eat and altering your hormone profile. Oh, and quite a lot of people still manage to put at least a proportion of the weight back on. But once you get to biggest loser sorts of sizes other than anecdote no one has found something that reliably works.

[BRUTE]

brute wonders about the distribution of humans who want/should/try to lose weight, how many are 5lbs overweight vs. biggest loser type overweight? these groups might need very different solutions.

[enigmaT120]

5 pounds should be a piece of cake (not literally!). My own weight fluctuates that much for no reason I can bother with trying to discern.